The Importance of BI Specific Skill Sets

BI implementations are becoming more commonplace as organizations realize they cannot overlook the management of and access to their data in order to facilitate better decision-making. What this means for many is the re-evaluation of resources, skill sets, and project planning to ensure that the proper resources exist to support BI and analytics development.

BI implementations are becoming more commonplace as organizations realize they cannot overlook the management of and access to their data in order to facilitate better decision-making. What this means for many is the re-evaluation of resources, skill sets, and project planning to ensure that the proper resources exist to support BI and analytics development. Unfortunately, many businesses overlook the fact that IT development expertise does not equal BI savvy.

There are SMBs without the IT resources to facilitate a project but there are also companies with an IT department and developers on-hand, but without BI development experience or skills. The reason why this is an important consideration is because in order for solutions to be effective, they need to be designed right – and right includes understanding data, analytics, and design in a way that promotes BI best practices. In general, two types of organizations exist, and identifying and leveraging the right skill sets are equally important for both.

Organizations that don’t care

Businesses may feel that they don’t have the bandwidth to hire new people or to train existing staff. The problem is that risks increase as developers, already over allocated in many cases, struggle to get a solution up and running that they don’t understand.

Although solutions will be developed and analytics access granted, there may be inconsistencies in performance, leading to the inability to access the data required when needed or to required functionality not being leveraged efficiently. Either way, organizations need to understand that investing in a BI initiative may require budget set aside for skill set development or outsourcing services.

Organizations willing to invest

Other organizations are willing to invest to make sure that their BI solutions are developed properly. In many of these cases, vendor professional services or outside consultants are used to develop the initial solutions to get BI up and running, or alternatively, to enhance what already exists. For these organizations it still becomes important to ensure that support exists on an ongoing basis or a transfer of skill sets occurs so that BI can be properly maintained moving forward.

The reality for organizations is that BI success requires specific skills and knowledge, and are not within the realm of a generalist to do effectively. Although many organizations attempt to go it alone, the reality is that businesses require an in-depth understanding of the technology and tools used in order to develop successful BI applications.